Review: ‘Still Star-Crossed’ Goes Beyond Romeo and Juliet

“Forbear to judge based on only the premiere episode,” Shakespeare wrote, or might have, and thus we shall not be too harsh on “Still Star-Crossed,” which begins Monday night on ABC. It’s a drama that takes up where “Romeo and Juliet” ended, more or less, but it’s hard to tell from the one overstuffed installment provided for review whether it’s going to cohere into something worth sticking with.

Romeo and Juliet (Lucien Laviscount and Clara Rugaard) are actually still alive as the series opens, but only long enough to be married and then die basically as Shakespeare described. The series, based on Melinda Taub’s young-adult novel, intends to fashion its plotlines from the continuing blood feud between the Montagues and Capulets (who did not, it turns out, bury the hatchet in honor of the deceased young lovers), outside threats to Verona, class divisions and various romances.

The premiere introduces assorted secondary characters from the play and lays the groundwork for some or all of them to become significant: Lady Capulet (Zuleikha Robinson), Lord Capulet (Anthony Head), Lord Montague (Grant Bowler), the Nurse (Susan Wooldridge), Friar Lawrence (Dan Hildebrand) and more. Prince Escalus (Sterling Sulieman) has the job of trying to make peace between the warring families while also defending Verona from attack.

Most intriguing in the premiere are Rosaline (Lashana Lynch) and Livia (Ebonee Noel), sisters who are cousins of Juliet but have been relegated to servant status. The prince has more than a passing interest in Rosaline, who appears likely to emerge as this show’s main character, but by the end of the introductory episode he has made a startling decree involving her for the benefit of the city.

Despite the vast population of figures from the play, this isn’t a show aimed at Shakespeare scholars; a mere passing acquaintance with “Romeo and Juliet” will do. It’s also not “Shakespeare in Love”; it won’t dazzle you with quick references, wittily deployed Shakespearean lines and so on.

That’s not necessarily good because it means the show (whose executive producers include Shonda Rhimes) risks being just another costume drama with tiresome power struggles and who-cares romantic entanglements. As NBC discovered this year with the one-and-done “Emerald City,” a decent reimagining of “The Wizard of Oz” that didn’t catch on, mucking with a classic is a tricky business.

Still Star-CrossedMondays on ABC

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C4 of the New York edition with the headline: Families Feuding And Yielding Plots. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe